Category — children

“Our projections show that virtually all the progress made in family economic well-being since 1975 will be wiped out,”

via Recession threatens U.S. progress in child wellbeing | U.S. | Reuters.

 On Friday, Good Morning America ran an inaccurate and unbalanced story, painting public pre-kindergarten as a “scam” and a “waste of money.” 

The three-minute segment did not have a single word about the four decades of research proving that quality pre-k benefits all children or that it returns $2 or more for every dollar we invest.

Add your name to the petition to GMA producers and help make sure our children don’t pay the price for news stories that omit the facts about pre-k!

Take Action: Stand up to media attacks on pre-k

Many Americans think that ECT has gone the way of bloodletting, but it continues to be regarded by American psychiatry as a respected treatment, especially for patients who are “treatment resistant” to drugs. Although ECT for young children is nowhere near as common as for adults, most U.S. states do not prohibit ECT for kids. California prohibits ECT for children under the age of 12 but allows children between 12 and 15 to receive ECT if three psychiatrists are in favor of it.

Psychiatrys Shock Doctrine: Are We Really OK With Electroshocking Toddlers? | Health and Wellness | AlterNet

A couple in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada founded the International Campaign to Ban Electroshock (ICBE)  in 2007. The ICBE website has ECT articles, links, videos and other pages. The ICBE deems ECT to be unethical, barbaric an atrocity and a crime against humanity.

With President Bush no longer around to veto it, the Senate has ”overwhelmingly approved legislation yesterday to provide health insurance to 11 million low-income children, a bill that would for the first time spend federal money to cover children and pregnant women who are legal immigrants. … The House approved similar legislation on Jan. 14, and President Obama is expected to sign a final version as early as next week.”

Senate Passes Health Legislation for Low-Income Children (Finally!) | Health and Wellness | AlterNet

A new study finds that certain brain functions of some low-income 9- and 10-year-olds pale in comparison with those of wealthy children and that the difference is almost equivalent to the damage from a stroke.

“It is a similar pattern to what’s seen in patients with strokes that have led to lesions in their prefrontal cortex,” which controls higher-order thinking and problem solving, says lead researcher Mark Kishiyama, a cognitive psychologist at the University of California-Berkeley. “It suggests that in these kids, prefrontal function is reduced or disrupted in some way.”

Study: Poverty dramatically affects childrens brains – USATODAY.com

Associated Press: Some 691,000 children went hungry in America sometime in 2007, while close to one in eight Americans struggled to feed themselves adequately even before this year’s sharp economic downturn, the Agriculture Department reported. The department’s annual report on food security showed that during 2007 the number of children who suffered a substantial disruption in the amount of food they typically eat was more than 50 percent above the 430,000 in 2006 and the largest figure since 716,000 in 1998. Overall, the 36.2 million adults and children who struggled with hunger during the year was up slightly from 35.5 million in 2006. That was 12.2 percent of Americans who didn’t have the money or assistance to get enough food to maintain active, healthy lives.

News from The Associated Press